Rush University Medical Center’s transformation program invests new technologies and buildings to improve patient care, while also reorganizing the entire Rush campus.

Thornton Tomasetti is the structural engineer for the multi-year redevelopment plan, providing structural design services for a new 806,000-square-foot, 14-story hospital addition; an entry pavilion that connects to the existing hospital; and the renovation of the existing hospital. The project scope includes the design and construction of a new loading dock, utility tunnels, a pedestrian bridge, a central utility plant and a medical office building.

The new hospital addition utilizes a steel-frame system with steel columns and composite steel beams. The lateral system is composed of reinforced concrete shearwalls. The addition’s foundations are belled and straight shaft caissons.

The addition incorporates an interventional platform concept, that devotes three floors to surgery, imaging and specialty procedures and allows multiple specialists to collaborate and treat patients using state-of-the-art technologies.

The entry pavilion serves as the main entrance to both the new addition and the existing hospital. The pavilion boasts a three-story-high lobby area with an open-air terrarium that extends 40 feet to a roof-top garden. Natural daylighting filters into the space through two skylights. Pedestrian bridges running through the pavilion improve patient conveyance and circulation by providing a direct route from the patient floors to specialists located in the new hospital.

The transformation program is paying special attention to environmental efficiency and responsiveness and is seeking LEED Gold certification.